Shooting at F.I.T.

No, this isn't a tragic news post about gun violence at an engineering school - it's a photography post.

Now that I've reduced the threat level of Grant's Pad back down to its usual Green level, on with the story!

Grant's Pad is rated 'E' for everyone, even babies!

The Florida Institute of Technology (or Florida Tech, as it is often referred to today) is a private college local to Melbourne that specializes in engineering degrees. As a self-proclaimed University of Florida snob, I admittedly don't think much of F.I.T.'s academic or athletic (Division II) programs, but by many accounts it is actually a decent school. In fact, I've been told that many students preferred F.I.T. for their graduate studies because the smaller class sizes gave them more opportunities to do research.

Cherry sporting a gangsta pants leg look F.I.T.'s administration building

Now that we actually live in Melbourne, I try to find reasons to be proud of our little hometown, so now is as good a time as any to take some pride in this relatively unique facet of the city. For what it's worth, F.I.T.'s campus is moderately attractive - with architecture that is certainly different from the bricks and vines of my beloved alma mater.

F.I.T.'s mascot is a Florida Panther

For this particular visit, however, I was most interested in F.I.T.'s botanical garden. F.I.T's campus is built around a creek, and around this creek is a plot of, for lack of a better term, jungle, that serves as F.I.T.'s botanical garden. The reason I call it a jungle is because there isn't much in terms of flowers that you would find in your typical botanical garden. Rather, F.I.T.'s botanical garden consists heavily of tropical plants, such as palms and bamboo.

F.I.T.'s botanical garden is more of a jungle than a traditional garden

Despite having had my awesome Rebel XSi for about three months now, this trip is actually our first real shooting trip with the new camera. We'd taken a lot of photos in our neighborhood and a few on some shopping trips as well, but none really on our various trips around the area. My inexperience sort of shows in these photos. The lighting was not very good, despite our trip's proximity to the evening "Golden Hour". In retrospect, I could have probably rectified some of the issues with my EF 50mm f/1.8 II, but I wanted to start to learn how to use my EF-S 18-55mm zoom lens. In any case, I have a lot to learn about landscape and nature photography, and about photo composition in general!

Budding and experienced photographers out there, if you have any advice, please feel free to share it! Be gentle though - we are just starting to learn!

The lighting in this photo is horrendous, but Fifi is so darn cute in it that I had to keep it...

 

This photo would have benefitted from a longer exposure time and more depth of field I think...



My attempt at recreating the "House of Flying Daggers" look... more bokeh needed? Maybe?

I have a hard time taking photos of just environment. Not very good at identifying potential subjects yet...

Portraits are pretty easy though!

As you can plainly tell, I haven't posted any photos taken in "wide angle"... because I suck at it now. That said, I haven't really identified any scenes that would look good in wide angle yet either. But I will, so keep an eye out!

Baby Sofia Milestones, Entry No. 3

Mid last week, Fifi had her six month birthday! Ordinarily, the associated post would just have some celebratory language, but this time, we actually have a lot to report, despite having just had a Milestones entry a week or so ago!

Awww... I manufactured this shot, but it's still super cute!

Last time, we talked about her newly acquired barrel roll and sitting abilities. This past week, Fifi's expanded her repertoire to backwards crawling - she can scoot quite fast and usually ends up in a corner under a desk somewhere - and also has started propping herself up on her hands and knees - a sure sign that she will be really crawling soon!

Rrrrrrgh...

Ta daaa!

Her learning ability has also shown some great strides. We got her this talking soccer ball a little over a week ago. At first, she was frightened by it, and didn't really know what to do with it, but now, she will knock it (and other balls, like the beach ball in the photo below) around to entertain herself for close to a half hour!

Her vocabulary, if you can call it that, is also growing fast. Only a few weeks ago, her vocals were limited to "Aaahs" and "Ohhhs". But, in the span of about 10 days, she's added "Mama" and "Baba"! I'm not sure she's associated Mommy and Daddy to those terms yet, but as a parent, it's always exciting to hear those sounds! And so often...

Physically, Fifi's appetite has come back in a strong way since her stomach virus. Whereas during her illness, she had trouble eating more than 24 ounces per day, she is now downing around 40, preferring bottles of 7-8 ounces of milk or formula. Formula is still a bit hit or miss, but if she is very hungry, she'll down it with little fuss too.

Fifi also has her first tooth! It caught me a bit by surprise. The pediatrician had told us that she was probably teething a few weeks back, but she said it would still be a little while before they started popping up. But sure enough, Fifi has a real tooth jutting out from her lower gums that she likes to gnaw on things with!

It's a little fuzzy, but that is a tooth popping up there...

That's all for this entry of Baby Sofia Milestones! Coming up soon - more teeth and more mobility!

Baby Sofia Milestones, Entry No. 2

It's been more than two weeks since Grandma went home, and, as frequent Grant's Pad readers can probably tell, it's taken a toll on the amount of time I've been able to post! Life without Grandma has been pretty rough getting used to, but very rewarding nonetheless, as Fifi develops at a rapid rate. In fact, she's gone through a number of new experiences since Grandma left, some good, some bad!

For starters, the bad. Fifi got her first real illness shortly after Grandma left. One day, Cherry called me to come home from work right away because Fifi had thrown up multiple times during the day. This went on for a few days - we supplemented her with some Pedialyte to make sure she stayed hydrated, but nonetheless, she kept vomiting. A few days later, we took her to the pediatrician, who diagnosed her with her first stomach virus, which was somewhat unusual since Fifi didn't have any sort of fever whatsoever!

Soon, Fifi stopped vomiting, but still not all was well. Her appetite had greatly diminished, and she'd suddenly become a very picky eater. Only a few weeks earlier, Fifi had started eating rice cereal and seemed to be plenty happy eating... not milk!

Yum!

But after her illness, she wouldn't have any of it. Any time we tried to feed her anything that wasn't breast milk, she would make a funny face and push it away.

Ordinarily, this would not have been a concern, except by some freak coincidence, Cherry developed a pretty bad case of mastitis. This is when one or more milk ducts gets clogged up and infected, causing painful lumps, and in this particular case, a 103 degree fever! Of course, it also affected Cherry's milk production, which in turn meant that Fifi wasn't getting much to eat at all.

Fortunately, that problem started to go away after some heat compresses and some medication, and around the same time, Fifi started to accept Enfamil baby formula as well, allowing Cherry to catch up a bit with her production. Now, she still won't eat cereal, but at least she's expanded her diet a little bit!

Since Grandma's left, we've started trying to broaden Fifi's world a little bit. We started by going to Izzy's birthday party, where Izzy showed off her Tomahawk Chop after getting our FSU-themed birthday present (I know, it hurts to even admit that we got something like that...)

Happy Birthday!

Not the "chomp", but still pretty cute

We also started using a baby carrier sometimes instead of the stroller to let Fifi get a better view of the world around her:

Rockin' at Toys 'R Us

Sticking to the travel theme, Fifi has also learned to be a lot more tolerant on car rides. Previously, for whatever reason, she really hated being in the car. She still doesn't like it much, but as long as she stays somewhat entertained, she can go places without bawling too much.

One BIG area of improvement in Fifi's behavior is the ability to sleep on her own from time to time. Due to her eczema, Cherry and Grandma pretty much held Fifi all the time while Grandma was here, causing her to be somewhat spoiled. Now that Grandma isn't here any more, Cherry by herself simply isn't able to match the amount of holding, but fortunately, Fifi is adapting a little. We have to watch out a bit when she does sleep on her own, however, because she's become very adept at rolling over and spinning around on her tummy and back!

Not only has she increased her barrel roll ability, she's also gained the ability to sit all by her lonesome! Cherry found this out just this past week when Fifi sat up straight to watch TV... something else she's starting to love...

Little TV addict...

Due to her newfound sitting ability, we've started to change some of the furniture around as well. No longer able to safely sit in her baby swing (because she'd always try to sit up in it), we converted it into a high chair:

Swing transformed into high chair!

We've also started letting her sit in the umbrella stroller! That way, our full size stroller can be relegated to just outdoor duty and the umbrella stroller can be used for indoor joy rides!

Vroom!

Stay tuned for Milestones number 3!